The Kindle Unlimited pay-per-page royalty to authors for October fell by 4% to $0.0048 per KENP (Kindle Edition Normalized Page) from $0.0050 in September.
The KU payout has now fallen by nearly 16% from $0.0057 per KENP in July, which was the first month of operation for the pay-per-page system.
October’s KDP Select global fund hit yet another high of $12.4 million, up by 3.3% from $12 million in September, but the rise was not enough to stop the payout level slipping again.
The new rate means a 100,000-word ebook representing about 534 KENPs (at an average of 187 words per KENP) would get a Kindle Unlimited payout of around $2.56 on a fully read borrow compared with $2.67 in September, $2.72 in August and $3.04 in July.
Dividing the $12.4 million KDP fund by the $0.0048 royalty gives a total of 2,583,333,333 KENPs read in October, up by 7.6% on September’s KENP total of 2,400,000,000 (2.4 billion).
Amazon has now paid out a total of $105.4 million to authors in the calendar year so far and the KDP fund for November has been set at an initial level of $12 million.
The KU subscription service has been expanding to more countries and Amazon recently warned that factors such as exchange rates and local subscription pricing now vary substantially by marketplace, giving the example of KU in India which charges a local subscription price of ₹199 ($3) per month.
Starting with the November fund, Amazon is going to take these marketplace differences into account and payouts per country will differ based on local factors.
It’s difficult to say just what effect this move will have as the vast majority of KU business is in the US or Europe where subscription levels are highest.